vision or ideas

(image courtesey of xkcd.com)


Having a Vision and having Ideas are very different things. Going off on tangents (ideas) can be fun, possibly useful for brainstorming, but most of us would like to see some sort of result, or progress at least.


A Vision gives us the landscape, strategic planners love models or written plans as that way the Vision becomes matter. There's 2 sides to this coin. 


Naturally only having ideas doesn't lead to much. Over the years I have toughened up in that regard. Once upon a time when little Miryam was in ArtSchool having tons of fun for 5 years there was room for exploring and fluffing. The thing I regret about becoming older is that inherently it becomes more realistic and usually therefor less fun. Darn! But it shouldn't have to be. That's why it's important to keep the balance of having fun as well as knowing what you're really up against. Pink glasses are so yesterday.


So making the transition from ideas, to dream, to Vision, takes time, and both creativity and sensibility are needed. Just trying and seeing how it goes usually falters. Or the steam runs out if the Vision isn't strong enough (been there done that). Entrepreneurs or Artists that are most successful seem to possess the blend of several aspects that are necessary:


1. Talent: creativity
2. Vision: knows goals
3. Determination and conviction
4. Connector/net-worker: knows many people
5. Has financials in order
6. Web-savvy and use social media
7. Produce results


From what I can see online and observe in the real world; the ones that are "clued in" are savvy. They do their homework, take chances and go all the way. They stick their necks out, they pursue that which they believe in. Of course they have doubts about some aspects, as they are human, but generally they stick to their guns and ride the waves. They also are very good at building tribes (Seth Godin) which means they have a loyal fan-base and peers in their industry.


On this topic also read an excellent post by Roberto Verganti for Harvard here.


People that have done very well by following their Vision (imho):
Hugh Macleod: Gapingvoid art/wine/writing
Gary Vaynerchuk: wine 
Chris Guillebeau: writer and traveler
Boh Runga: NZ musician and jewellery designer
Lucy : TheDesignFiles: interior decor blog


The future consists of adapting to new media, but to keep continuing 'the story' as that is vital to building the personable brand. Business has become personal, with communication becoming intimate. This also means transparency, ethics and being genuine are on the top of the list.

Generation M: stuff that matters

Sharing with you today:

The Generation M Manifesto
by Umair Haque

"Dear Old People Who Run the World,

My generation would like to break up with you.

Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences.

• You wanted big, fat, lazy "business." We want small, responsive,

micro-scale commerce.

You turned politics into a dirty word. We want authentic, deep democracy — everywhere.

You wanted financial fundamentalism. We want an economics that makes sense for people — not just banks.

You wanted shareholder value — built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.

You wanted an invisible hand — it became a digital hand. Today's markets are those where the majority of trades are done literally robotically. We want a visible handshake: to trust and to be trusted.

You wanted growth — faster. We want to slow down — so we can become better.

You didn't care which communities were capsized, or which lives were sunk. We want a rising tide that lifts all boats.

You wanted to biggie size life: McMansions, Hummers, and McFood. We want to humanize life.

You wanted exurbs, sprawl, and gated anti-communities. We want a society built on authentic community.

You wanted more money, credit and leverage — to consume ravenously. We want to be great at doing

stuff that matters.

You sacrificed the meaningful for the material: you sold out the very things that made us great for trivial gewgaws, trinkets, and gadgets. We're not for sale: we're learning to once again do what is meaningful.

There's a tectonic shift rocking the social, political, and economic landscape. The last two points above are what express it most concisely. I hate labels, but I'm going to employ a flawed, imperfect one: Generation "M."

What do the "M"s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It's a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth "M"s.

Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government. Who's Gen M?

Obama, kind of. Larry and Sergey. The Threadless, Etsy, and Flickr guys. Ev, Biz and the Twitter crew. Tehran 2.0. The folks at Kiva, Talking Points Memo, and FindtheFarmer. Shigeru Miyamoto, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus, and Jeff Sachs are like the grandpas of Gen M. There are tons where these innovators came from.

Gen M isn't just kind of awesome — it's vitally necessary. If you think the "M"s sound idealistic, think again.

The great crisis isn't going away, changing, or

"morphing." It's the same old crisis — and it's growing.
You've failed to recognize it for what it really is. It is, as I've repeatedly pointed out, in our institutions: the rules by which our economy is organized.

But they're your institutions, not ours. You made them — and they're broken. Here's

what I mean:
"... For example, the auto industry has cut back production so far that inventories have begun to shrink — even in the face of historically weak demand for motor vehicles. As the economy stabilizes, just slowing the pace of this inventory shrinkage will boost gross domestic product, or GDP, which is the nation's total output of goods and services."
Clearing the backlog of SUVs built on 30-year-old technology is going to pump up GDP? So what? There couldn't be a clearer example of why GDP is a totally flawed concept, an obsolete institution.

We don't need more land yachts clogging our roads: we need a 21st Century auto industry.
I was (kind of) kidding about seceding before. Here's what it looks like to me:

every generation has a challenge, and this, I think, is ours: to foot the bill for yesterday's profligacy — and to create, instead, an authentically, sustainably shared prosperity.
Anyone — young or old — can answer it. Generation M is more about what you do and who you are than when you were born. So the question is this: do you still belong to the 20th century - or the 21st?

Love,
Umair and the Edge Economy Community"

A bit about Umair:

Umair Haque is Director of the Havas Media Lab, a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs, and firms experiment with, craft, and drive radical management, business model, and strategic innovation.

If you like to read about his thoughts and about what responses he received because of this Manifesto: click here

photo by Devianart

Nutshell marketing: value

The funny thing is that basically marketing is simple but it gets complicated in HOW you go about things.

Many people ask ‘Why are we not selling (enough)?’
1. Because people don’t need your product/services
2. Because they don’t have the money for it (which means they do not want it badly enough)
3. They don’t believe in your product/services
Well that’s very understandable right?

What value actually means is:
Establishing the desire point and building trust to successfully satisfy. True value is: I will get you what you want like no one else can. Value funny enough doesn’t equal service. Consider your social proof and your pricing into the equation as well. What are people getting from you and what is it 'worth' to them? Value is more emotionally based. It's in the opinion.

There’s 2 types of desired clients:
The passionate-about-a-product ones (your ambassadors to be)
The sitting on the fence ones (they like it but don’t go in head first)

To succeed you have to find the primary driver emotion of your client. Why does he really really want it? The essential thing is to go in conversation with him: use empathy + validation to make your credibility shoot up. ("We know what we are talking about here") Demonstrate the value of your product to get the sale. This sounds cut and dry and in reality it's a flowing event. Make sure there's a start and finish, be clear, answer all questions and objections.

Value is defined by what other people say. According to marketing guru Frank Kern you CAN manufacture reality. The client then HAS to believe you. Therefore you HAVE to build trust. Makes sense really, but good to think about more.

How do you get that? By:
Listening
Using authority: claim it yourself + appointed (reputation) + testimonials
Likeability
a. Affinity: being just like them> confide in them
b. Represent desired outcome
c. Fun (why would you ever buy from someone who didn't make you laugh?)

I saw a video of Frank Kern, a marketing guru from the US, which mentions the above. His vital point is that you NEED to appropriately confide in your client. Share about yourself which makes them connect with you. Telling a story is a very good way to do this. The connection builds the trust and the credibility supports what value you are giving. Many of us do this intuitively but it’s nice to have it pointed out, especially in these interesting times. It’s amazing what a change one can experience with clients, or people on the street for that matter, when you find common ground. Listening is also a bright idea as many of us talk too much. (Including me.) Happy marketing!

Providing value

I have made the decision to thoroughly change the way my website Quality Living is operated. I will turn it into an agency in 3 months opposed to keeping it as a network.

My talent is to CREATE and my time is better spend working on designs and being a creator opposed to setting up a business that is not my passion.

The following text is from Steve Pavlina, entrepreneur on VALUE.

Succeeding by Helping Others Succeed
February 19th, 2009 by Steve Pavlina
(…) How do you know if what you have to share has value? Share it first, and you’ll soon find out. If it provides value, people will tell you. If it doesn’t, people will usually ignore you. As long as you’re getting ignored, keep experimenting by trying to provide value in new and unique ways. The only limits are in your thinking. (…)

I was able to start providing value to others much more quickly because I wasn’t stuck thinking about making money. I focused on the service side. I soon figured out how to use my skills to give people what they need and want.

The most important result to track isn’t how many visitors your website is getting or how much money you’re making. Instead, figure out whether you’re actually making a difference in people’s lives. Are you helping people? Are you providing

strong value? If you’re providing genuine value, time and referrals will take care of most of your other key metrics.

Recently I was talking to a friend in the personal development field. Business-wise he and I both had record years in 2008, and we each expect 2009 to blow it away. We joked about the rest of the economy crashing down around us. Why do we feel so optimistic when so many people are nervous? Because we know that we’re providing real value to people. We know that our skills are aligned with contribution. We also have the capacity to do a lot of good for people who are financially struggling, looking for career changes, or feeling uncertain about the future.

Align your skills with what people need. Helping people grow is a service that’s in very high demand. It doesn’t matter that we’re in a (media-fueled) recession. That just means people are more keen to reduce low-value expenditures, and they’re more sensitive to spending money wisely — on purchases that provide the best bang for buck for them. If you’re providing weak value, you’re on shaky ground during a recession. But if you’re providing solid value that meets human needs, a recession can create even bigger opportunities for you — people will drop the fluff from their lives and seek you out instead.

When your business model is no longer fed by sufficient demand, you can always switch to doing something else. But if there’s one thing humanity needs right now, it’s for more of us to step it up and embrace our true potential instead of settling for the limited roles assigned by our social conditioning. In our current environment, there’s still plenty of room for more people to start businesses based on helping and encouraging others to grow. We’re a long way from being over-saturated in this area"

Helping other grow and supporting them comes naturally to me. I don't even think about it. I will continue to support others but make it a side activity, not a main priority. It's time I got back to doing more fun stuff with my husband, he deserves better. To even have time to (gasp) paint! The world is my oyster haha and I intend to have more laughs about it. You enjoy it too...

Self doubt

We are in the habit of doubting ourselves. I thought I was running short of blogs..Running short?! How can that be with 35 blogs still to be published….. Even if I didn’t write for 6 weeks (!) I’d be dandy. Well that’s the benefit of working in advance I tell you. I was surprised that I had that many!
Getting back to the self doubt thing: Sometimes we can talk ourselves in to something or OUT of something. We sell ourselves short, we imagine things will happen that don’t etc and so on and so forth. Does this have to do with confidence? I think it has more to do with a reality check. Dreaming of achieving our goals is one thing, but we all like to anticipate in some form that we’ll actually make it.

I went through 5 website designs with Quality Living before I actually felt I achieved the result I was after. I took me a year and a half. Half of me was embarrassed it took so plippin long and the other half said, well c’est la vie. I work fulltime so can’t realistically expect my idea to fly and take off in a few months. I went through periods of frustration, teeth grinding, anger and doubt. When I finally made a resolution I’d no longer worry about the outcome but start with a clean slate it finally came together. Sometimes when you decide let go of the outcome the whole situation resolves. Magic stuff.

So when in doubt:
What’s the worst that could happen? Is it REALLY that bad/sad? No? Then dust yourself off and get on with it. Trust your own instinct and stop listening to others. It’s YOUR life. You know what to do. Trust that. What are you waiting for then? Go go go. And have a latte, and a muffin while you’re at it. Excellent.

The Business plan jitters

Yes it’s that time again: the big BP is looming. True it was already looming last year and I had done one version and started a second. The first one I understood but found lacking and the second attempt was way too long and felt like a visit to the dentist where the root canal was thoroughly being carried out. Time for version number 3 and the last one. I hate doing these things but that’s procrastination talking.

Why do I write one? Because I want to clarify the direction my business is taking. In short: a road map showing how goals and objectives can be achieved. You can’t get anywhere without knowing how to get there unless you’re keen to get lost and enjoy the experience.

First up: I have to do a SWOT. Looking at the word gives you the idea of either squatting behind a flax bush on the beach or giving the boot camp commander 20. Neither is applicable but I agree with the sentiment. A SWOT means doing a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis. (Beats sitting behind that flax bush any day cooking in the hot Dunedin sun not wearing any slip slap slop.) I type, I sigh, I think so hard that it makes my blond curls nearly straighten out with the forcefulness of it.

Then onto the next phase: The Now, The Strategy and ‘le grand vision’ followed by the Tactical Rapport (very Star Trek) topping it off with the Timelines (told you, it’s like being back in an episode with Seven of Nine). Do a profit and Loss forecast and where the Cash Flow is going to hang out and off you go. Well not quite but breaking it down into chunks sure helps my heartbeat return to a more normal thumpety thump. I have a great mind for expressing ideas, creative stuff and designing which is joined at the hip with socializing and whipping up pastas, but these number crunchers positively give me the willies! Give me an overly fussy client any day of the week instead of this. (I’m so grateful for Debbie the accountant we have here at work, she is a marvelous efficient woman.) And to think that I did a post graduate year of communication and PR where there was equal amounts of theory babble. How on earth did I tackle that?

The good news is that once I have survived all this I know at least what I’m looking at. It’s by no means a guarantee for success but the blond beware attitude is better then happily winging it a la Barbie. (And she was signed up with Mattel so turns out she wasn’t that stupid either even though she was made of plastic.) Bottom-line: whether you are Entrepreneur or Employee, and I’m both, it pays to prepare. So I type, sigh and persevere. Not with a vengeance but with an honest attempt to smile.